According to José Skinner, one of the contributors to Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso's remarkable collection of laments for a lost way of life along the frontera, the Reynosa daily newspaper El Mañana calls the prevailing climate of violence along the border “la situación social de excepción.”

Due to the violence already committed against journalists on the border for years, the use of an Orwellian euphemism such as “the exceptional social situation” is understandable.

That and a whole host of other flowery phrases have become the code under which people attempt to publicly discuss such events as mass killings of undocumented migrants, everyday extortion against business and property owners, kidnappings of the wealthy, and wholesale takeovers of towns by drug cartel militias.

For that reason, there was a great need for this book, and it should be noted that each of its remarkable essays includes represents a significant act of courage on the part of the authors, speaking truth to power.

“Our Lost Border” creates a welcome opening for frank and insightful reporting, analysis and reflection on a tragic situation still not comprehended well by many people on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The book benefits greatly from the collaborative efforts of two highly qualified editors.

Cortez, a Harris County peace officer, is also a poet and author of the memoir “Growing Up Hispanic in Houston” (Texas Review Press, 2010).

Troncoso, who hails from El Paso, is a prolific writer with degrees from both Harvard and Yale on his résumé. His “The Last Tortilla and Other Stories” (University of Arizona Press, 1999) won both the Premio Aztlán and the Southwest Book Award.

Cortez and Troncoso are to be credited for assembling an exceptional array of contributors, encompassing professors, poets, students and journalists.

They each eloquently and powerfully profile the border in both qualitative and quantitative terms — clearly fueled by strong personal and professional experiences.

In the book's first section, “The Tortured Landscape,” Liliana V. Blum, Lolita Bosch, Diego Osorno and María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba describe how the political and social territories they inhabit have been challenged by waves of violence, and how they and their communities have responded.

These essays, presented in both their original Spanish texts and excellent English translations, do an important job of educating readers about the history and influence of the cartels, plus how people are organizing to bravely document the narco-crimes and create a social movement against them.

The book's second section, “Personal Stories,” provides a platform for the authors to recount their losses in the context of their lives as people from families who have long inhabited both sides of the border.

There is some exceptionally beautiful and poignant writing in this section.

In Maria Cristina Cigarroa's “Selling Tita's House,” she poetically describes the importance to her family of her grandmother's home in Nuevo Laredo and its holiday rituals — and the painful process of her grandmother's decision to sell her home and move to Laredo.

José Antonio Rodriguez's “Sucking the Sweet” is an intensely packed, almost surrealistically composed elegy to the contrasts in his life between his home in McAllen and his birthplace in a tiny Mexican village taken over by narcotraficantes, between the world of his waking dreams and the fears he and his family have confronted now for years.

In their respective essays, Cortez and Troncoso paint vivid portraits of the Laredo, Juárez and El Paso they have lost, in the most personal terms — and express their outrage at the manner in which violence has become commonplace, and so unchecked by government authority, in the places where they have roots.

This book is essential reading for anyone who cares deeply about the U.S.-Mexico border and the future relations of our two countries.

It takes courage to open its pages, but that is a necessary first step toward changing “the exceptional situation” for the better.

Ed Conroy, a San Antonio writer, can be reached at econroy53@gmail.com.